Road Map for Gun Reform

I Was an NRA Lobbyist. Here’s My Road Map for Gun Reform.

There is a way to debate this issue that will actually get meaningful laws enacted that both sides can agree on.

By RICHARD FELDMAN

I'm a long-time gun rights proponent with pretty solid credentials. I lobbied for the NRA. I am the president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association and I even gave Ronald Reagan his first shooting lesson with a customized AR-15 when I ran the Firearm Industry’s Trade Association in 1992. I am also someone who has worked successfully on bipartisan gun control measures, specifically a child safety lock agreement supported by Bill Clinton, which explains in part why I am also a former NRA lobbyist.

Even at this highly charged moment, when emotions are at their peak after the shootings in California, Texas and Ohio, I believe there is a way to achieve meaningful gun law reforms without alienating millions of responsible gun owners who don’t believe that criminals, unsupervised children or mentally ill people should have access to any kind of weapon.

When I began my career as a lobbyist for the gun rights community back in 1984, it was not uncommon to hear prominent Democrats champion gun rights as vocally as their Republican colleagues. House Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), House Judiciary Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Texas) and Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) all argued that our identity as Americans was encapsulated in the rights enshrined by the Second Amendment. But those moderate Democratic voices have all but disappeared, lost to redistricting and changing demographics, and in their place the pro-gun and anti-gun rights groups have filled the void with inflammatory culture war rhetoric—all to the detriment of average gunowners.

Democrats, the presidential field in particular, aren’t exactly helping things. Democratic candidates desperately need to realize that tens of millions of us gun folk view our participation in this democracy of ours through the lens of the gun issue. We wonder why we ought to trust politicians who want to limit our rights and our implied freedoms because some demented lunatic, or terrorist or common criminal misused a gun we wish he had never been able to access in the first place. If we continue to demonize legitimate gun owners we will fight tooth and nail to protect our property and our rights, preventing all of us from reforming what we can and bringing collective attention to issues that desperately need fixing.

Instead of bumper sticker sloganeering, why not approach this issue not as enemies but as compatriots? Let’s focus on our common goal to disarm (in advance) individuals we all agree ought not have the guns, and concurrently and forthrightly protect the ability for the rest of us to own them for any lawful activity. Here’s how to approach some of these issues in a way that is going to appeal to independents and blue-collar gun owners.

1. Stop saying ‘universal background checks.’
Today’s current gun control mantra is “universal background checks.” The Brady law passed in 1993 mandated background checks for gun purchasers at retail gun shops. These transactions are commercial in nature and generally between strangers—the firearms dealer and the buyer. Twenty years ago, the firearms industry (and even the NRA) supported these checks at gun shows as well as retail gun shops, but the original legislation extended only to federally licensed dealers, with no attempt made to extend that jurisdiction to nondealers. Today, you’ll find gun owners support background checks for all commercial transactions. That includes gun shows, flea markets and internet sales purchases. Strangers can’t possibly know the backgrounds of the buyer and these checks can prevent the unintentional transfer of a gun to a disqualified individual.

But when the word “universal” is used, gun owners rebel. Why? They don’t want to be turned into criminals for giving a firearm to their wife, their kids or their parents without a background check—which is exactly what they fear could happen if a law mandates background checks for all gun sales in the U.S.

So why not extend the Brady background check to all commercial sales, including gun shows, internet sales and flea markets, while carefully and responsibly crafting exemptions for relatives, friends and co-workers whom the seller has personally known for more than a year? And in cases where there is some doubt about the relationship, let’s encourage people to get the checks by giving them the same liability protection when crimes are committed with those guns that retail dealers have now. Compromise, that dirty word, means we both get something in the transaction that’s useful to us.

With these exemptions in place, opposition would be diminished, and legislation based on sound policy not “gotcha politics” will more easily be enacted. Most importantly, disqualified individuals would find it harder (though admittedly not impossible) to obtain guns. Isn’t that what we seek?

2. Help stop illegal gun sales.
Rampant trafficking of stolen weapons is another area of potential common ground. If we seriously desired (and why wouldn’t we?) to curtail the 700,000-plus annual gun thefts in this country, we could do it without too much controversy. Home thieves sell their stolen guns (and jewelry and everything else) to fences. Fences take those stolen guns over state lines and sell them back to dealers who have no simple means of knowing that they are in fact purchasing stolen merchandise. When a retailer buys a firearm he must record it in an “A & D” (acquisition and disposition) book. Even if the gun was reported stolen by make and serial number, the dealer wouldn’t know it. But if every dealer purchase were automatically run through NCIC (the National Crime Information Center run by the FBI), then local police, informed about the pending purchase of stolen property, could question the seller, leading to immediate arrests. Why steal what you can’t sell? Would a program like this end the theft of firearms? No. Would it cut down dramatically on those thefts? You bet it would.

Why have you never heard anyone talking about this before? It’s simple; there is no political advantage to solving this (or any) gun related problem if we can’t make political hay from the controversy. Issues are only useful when they are “us or them,” “black or white” with little to no nuanced middle ground. Isn’t that a large part of our problem in this country? We really are a rather centrist nation, but the enthusiasm of purists seems to dominate the debate. Perhaps we need enthusiastic moderates now and again to represent those of us who aren’t purists.

3. Remember: Not every gun owner is crazy.
“Red Flag Laws” are getting a lot of attention, but I prefer the term Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs). Something about the words “red flag” reminds me of “red herring.” But there’s a good reason for them. The theory behind this initiative is that people sometimes give us useful signals that they intend to commit violence—whether it’s against themselves or others—and if we act upon those signals by removing their guns we might sometimes prevent tragedies. But gun owners have legitimate fears that the system can be abused to their detriment. In order to amplify the good and minimize the bad, we need to build safeguards against a surveillance state that, in the wake of 9/11, has proved susceptible to overreach. If the process becomes punitive, not salutary, faith in the stated objective is defeated and people loss more respect for the laws and any changes are seen as new retributions to be opposed from the get go. A detailed description of a workable and fair policy can be found in David French’s article “A Gun-Policy Measure Conservatives Should Consider” from National Review of February of last year.

4. Learn what “assault weapon” really means.
Now let’s address the hottest hot button issue of gun politics, the dreaded “assault weapon” controversy. This is semantic doublespeak at its finest. Talk about two handy pejoratives— “assault” and “weapon.” Any gun can be an assault weapon if that’s your intent. This is just misleading labeling. These firearms are simply autoloading guns that fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled. They have been around since the late 1800s and more than a third of the 400 million-plus guns in the hands of American citizens are semi-automatic. Fully automatic firearms (machine guns) are heavily regulated and rarely seen by police or used in crimes. I even gave Ronald Reagan an AR-15 in 1992, and, while he fired it, I don’t believe it turned him into a mass murderer.

The AR-15 rifle, the semi-automatic version of the military M-16—with their black polymer frames, and folding stock—may look scary to uninformed or misinformed pundits, but they function identically to grandpa’s old hunting rifle. Outlawing the sale of AR-15-type rifles might (over time) lower the number of incidents involving AR-15 rifles. But what would be the value if criminals and crazies alike merely substitute a far more powerful hunting rifle in a .308 or .30-06 caliber for the relatively underpowered .223 caliber common to the AR-15?

All guns bear certain common features that make them firearms. They are all capable of firing a bullet in the direction the barrel is pointed and they do so only when the operator of the device pulls the trigger. Any loaded firearm pointed at me is an “assault weapon,” and any loaded firearm in my hands is a defensive device that I can and will use to protect myself, my family and my community. In short, the issue is never the gun per se, but always, “in whose hands is the gun”? If we start asking the right questions in this conversation, we stand a chance at coming up with answers that have the support of gun owners—and that is key to any solution. We can then do something useful. But if we continue to engage in polemics over real policy, the center will not hold and nothing that benefits our nation will occur.